Strasbourg 13.09.2022 Today the Bureau of the European Parliament appointed Mr Alessandro Chiocchetti as the institution’s new Secretary General.

The newly appointed Secretary General will take up his functions on 1 January 2023.

The appointment follows the decision of the Bureau in June 2022 to accept incumbent Secretary General Klaus Welle’s wish to retire by the end of 2022.

According the European Parliament’s Rules of Procedure the Bureau appoints the Secretary General.

The process allowed for the Members of the Bureau to hear four different candidates and ask questions. After careful deliberations, the Bureau decided with a very large majority to appoint Mr Chiocchetti as Secretary General of the European Parliament.

The Secretary-General is the European Parliament’s most senior official. He heads Parliament’s administration.

Mr Alessandro Chiocchetti is a long-standing civil servant of the Parliament. He is currently the Head of the Cabinet of the President. Before taking up this post he was Director for Legislative and Committees’ Coordination in the Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union. He has previously served as Deputy Head of Cabinet for the President and Cabinet member for two Secretary-Generals.

The European Parliament’s Bureau consists of the President and the 14 Vice-Presidents of the Parliament. It is chaired by the President. The five Quaestors are members of the Bureau in an advisory capacity. The Bureau takes financial, organisational and administrative decisions on matters concerning the internal organisation of Parliament, its Secretariat and its bodies.

It is a designation process that has been particularly criticized for its lack of transparency. The management of the European Parliament appointed its new Secretary General on Monday, 12 September, evening, a strategic administrative position in the functioning of the institution.

Management body of the European institution, bringing together the president and the fourteen vice-presidents, “the office of the European Parliament has appointed Mr. Alessandro Chiocchetti as the new secretary general of the institution” with a start on January 1, announced the European Parliament. Aged 53, this Italian had been the chief of staff of the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola (EPP, right) since her election in January.

Alessandro Chiocchetti has a degree in Political Science and International Law (University of Padua). He started his work for the European Parliament in 1996 as an Accredited Parliamentary Assistant, EPP Italian Delegation, European Parliament.